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History of the Hollings Marine Laboratory
In 1987, at the direction of Drs. Robert Kifer (then Director of the NOAA/NMFS Charleston laboratory) and Paul Sandifer (then Director of the SCDNR’s Division of Marine Resources, and later Director of the SCDNR), a joint position paper was prepared by staff of the NOAA Charleston Laboratory (now the NOS Center for Coastal Environmental Health and Biomolecular Research [CCEHBR]), the SCDNR Marine Resources Division , and the South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium . This “white paper” was the first step in the development of a new cooperative science facility designed to address the effects of environmental and anthropogenic stress in coastal and marine environments.
Over the next six years, needs and interests were more fully defined, and formal agreements were developed between the initial partners and with two academic partners of long standing—the College of Charleston and the Medical University of South Carolina —both of which already had facilities and personnel located at the South Carolina Marine Resources Center on Charleston Harbor. During this planning process, the focus of the multi-disciplinary effort was broadened to include evaluation of the effects of changes in the marine environment on human health.
In January 1994, an initial NOAA appropriation provided funding for the partners to undertake a detailed facility requirements study, and a Laboratory Planning Team was assembled with representatives from each of the four participating institutions. This Planning Team, accompanied by representatives of the A/E firm, toured a variety of marine research laboratories on the East, West, Gulf, and Great Lakes coasts of the United States, including facilities involved in fisheries, molecular
biology, environmental chemistry, and other areas of scientific investigation. None of the numerous facilities visited or contacted combined the broad range of disciplines at the level of scientific integration envisioned for the HML within a single laboratory. The lessons learned, however, allowed the Laboratory Planning Team to design a unique facility for addressing a wide range of contemporary marine research needs related to NOAA’s missions in a true interdisciplinary fashion. Because of the focus and strength of the partnership, in 1994 the HML planning team received an honorable mention for Vice President Gore’s “Reinventing Government Award”. In June 1995, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) formally joined the laboratory partnership.
The state of South Carolina provided the necessary land for the facility at the South Carolina Marine Resources Center under a 50-year essentially no-cost lease to the federal government. Congress appropriated a total of almost $50 million to NOAA over several years (1994-2005) to support design and construction of the HML, and annual operating funds were appropriated beginning in FY 2000. NIST provided additional construction and equipment funds. Facility design was a joint activity of all five participating institutions. Each of the institutions made substantial commitments of faculty and scientific staff time and expertise for the design, planning, implementation and ongoing operation of the joint enterprise over more than a decade.
The collaborative laboratory was originally called the “Marine Environmental Health Research Laboratory (MEHRL)”, but was renamed the “Hollings Marine Laboratory” in honor of South Carolina’s Senator Ernest F. Hollings in 2000. The HML became fully operational in 2004.